The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) will see first light with a single primary mirror in January 2003. It will be equipped with fully adaptive secondary mirrors from the beginning as well as a complete on-axis wavefront sensing and tip-tilt guiding system. Here we present the preliminary design of the Acquisition, Guiding, and Wavefront sensing system for the LBT. The system is divided in an of...

Tactile sensing is an essential component in many applications such as robotics, haptics, rehabilitation, electrotextiles, prosthetics and many more. In the light of greater focus on man-machine interaction, the importance of artificial tactile sensing as an important feedback tool is also growing. Starting with an overview of tactile sensing, in humans and robots, this chapter presents artific...

John S. Popovics Summary Lasers are devices that create a high intensity, directed light beam. The light beam can travel in air or through fiber optic cables. Lasers can be used to generate waves and detect stretching or motion in a solid material without direct contact with the material. Thus lasers are useful in many important engineering applications that require remote non-destructive evalu...

We propose a method to acquire compressed measurements for efficient video reconstruction using a single-pixel camera. The method is suitable for implementation using a single-pixel detector, along with a digital micromirror device or other types of spatial light modulators. Conventional implementations of single-pixel cameras are able to spatially compress the signal, but the compressed measur...

We successfully prepared one-dimensional ZnO-ZnFe2O4 (ZFO) heterostructures for acetone gas-sensing and photoelectrochemical applications, by using sputter deposition of ZFO crystallites on ZnO nanostructure templates. The nanoscale ZFO crystallites were homogeneously coated on the surfaces of the ZnO nanostructures. Electron microscope images revealed that the ZnO-ZFO heterostructures exhibite...

The sensitivity of silicon nanopillar array for relative humidity (RH) with UV illumination was investigated in this work. The silicon nanopillar array was prepared by nanosphere lithography. Electrical measurements were performed on its sensing performance with and without UV irradiation. It was found that UV light improved the humidity sensitivity with different UV light wavelengths and power...

Active range sensing using structured-light is the most accurate and reliable method for obtaining 3D information. However, most of the work has been limited to range sensing of static objects, and range sensing of dynamic (moving or deforming) objects has been investigated recently only by a few researchers. Sinusoidal structured-light is one of the well-known optical methods for 3D measuremen...

In this review, we introduce photonic crystal fibre as a novel optofluidic microdevice that can be employed as both a versatile chemical sensor and a highly efficient microreactor. We demonstrate that it provides an excellent platform in which light and chemical samples can strongly interact for quantitative spectroscopic analysis or photoactivation purposes. The use of photonic crystal fibre i...

Although the genetics and biochemistry of bacterial luminescence have been investigated extensively, the biological role of this phenomenon remains unclear. Here it is shown that luxA, luxB and luxD mutants (unable to emit light) of the marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi are significantly more sensitive to UV irradiation when cultivated in the dark after irradiation than when cultivated under a wh...

We present an effective dynamical model for the onset of bacterial bioluminescence, one of the most studied quorum sensing-mediated traits. Our model is built upon simple equations that describe the growth of the bacterial colony, the production and accumulation of autoinducer signal molecules, their sensing within bacterial cells, and the ensuing quorum activation mechanism that triggers biolu...